Was Jesus in Heaven before he was born?

(J. & S. Palmer)

A three part booklet (originally written for an African audience) that looks at the Bible teaching about God’s plan of
everlasting life for humans, and how that plan He had from the beginning was
all centred on the coming of His real and only son Jesus Christ and the work he
would do.

PART ONE

Many churches
today teach that Jesus existed before his birth by the virgin Mary. They say
that he is ‘from everlasting to everlasting’ just like God his Father, meaning that he has
no beginning and no end. Some say he was
an angel before his birth, some say he was a spirit. Many people say that it does not
really matter what we believe about God and
Jesus - that as long as we do believe in them we will be saved. So let's look carefully
at the Bible. A good rule in Bible study is to look at Bible verses in the
context that they are written in and to
interpret them by using other parts of the Bible. There are many verses that may confuse us on this subject so
let’s look closely at them.

As Christadelphians, we believe that
Jesus did not exist until his birth 2000 years ago. The teaching that says Jesus did exist comes from the Trinity doctrine
that was made up around 300 years after
the birth of Jesus. This is what the teaching says:

ATHANASIAN CREED

"We worship
one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity — there is one Person of the Father,
another of the Son and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the
Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one; the Glory equal, the
Majesty co-eternal. The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost
uncreate... He that will be saved MUST think this of the
Trinity"

So it says that
Jesus is ‘uncreate’ (meaning that he didn't have a beginning) and that he is equal with his Father because he did
not come from Him. We believe that neither of these
is true or can be found in the Bible. Even the words 'uncreate1 and
'trinity' are not found in the Bible because this teaching was not known
when the Bible was written. In this article
we just want to look at whether Jesus did or did not exist before his birth in any way.

Let us look at
some of the reasons why believing that Jesus existed before his birth doesn't make
sense.

JESUS - IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

If Jesus existed before his birth (we
read about his birth at the beginning of the New Testament in the gospels), we
would expect to read about him in Old Testament times. However, even though we find that much of the Old Testament does speak
about Jesus it is all prophecy. Prophecy is looking at something that is
going to happen in the future. So everything we read about Jesus is saying that
he will come in the future. We are told that he will be born of the virgin Mary
(Isaiah 7:14); that he will die (Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53); that he will
be King of the whole world (Zechariah 14:9); and that he will sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem (2Samuel 7:11-16).
But we never read that he is alive or in heaven with God or that he is involved at all with people on the earth
in the Old Testament.

Remember too, that
God had spoken about Jesus in his promises to Abraham and David. God
promised Abraham that he would have a 'seed' or a descendant who would be very special and through this
descendant all nations would be able to be saved (Genesis 22:17-18/12:1-3). We
know this is talking about Jesus because in Galatians 3:16 it says that this
seed is Jesus. God promised David that one of his descendants would sit on his throne for ever and rule over
Israel and we know that this is speaking of Jesus because in Luke 1:32-35 it says so. Now, if Jesus already
existed, why is God promising to Abraham and to David that Jesus will
come in the future, that he will be a descendant
of them. It doesn't really make sense. These promises a]| speak in a future tense showing that Jesus had not come yet but that
one day he would. Read 2 Samuel 7:12 and 14. Notice that God says to David that
this descendant 'will be my
son and I will be his father'. So God is saying that Jesus is not his
son yet, because he hasn't yet been born, but one day he will be born
and God will then be his father. In Isaiah 7:14, the prophecy that shows
Jesus would be born to the virgin Mary, it says 'a virgin SHALL
conceive' (shall has the same meaning as will), so again it is using the future tense, showing that this still has to
happen. In Luke 1:32 'he SHALL be great'. This would be strange if Jesus did already exist because it is saying
that he wasn't great before his birth, but if we understand that Jesus didn't
start to exist until his birth it makes sense.

We see too that
many of the Old Testament prophecies talk about a coming Saviour that the Jews called
Messiah. He was going to save them from sin and death. The prophets say what the Messiah would be like and
what he would do so that when he came, the Jews
would recognize him. When we read in the gospels about the life and death of Jesus,
we see that he is the one that was promised in the Old Testament. He was the Messiah. The Messiah that the Israelites were
expecting was a man and not God. In the Old Testament the people had been scared when God came and talked to them
and they had asked for a man to
represent God who would tell them God's words. So they didn't want God
to directly speak to them - they wanted Him to do it through a man. Read Exodus
20:18,19. God did what the people asked and used Moses to speak His words to the people. In Deuteronomy 18:15-20, Moses
reminds the Israelites what they'd asked
God to do. Then he makes a prophecy about the future when another prophet, an Israelite
like Moses, would be born to the Israelite people. He would come and speak God's words. This was the promise of the coming
Messiah. We know it is talking of Jesus
because Acts 3:22 and 7:32 quote these words and say it is Jesus. So we can see
that the Messiah (Jesus) was not a God but man. The people didn't want God speaking
directly with them, so He sent a MAN. He was born from the Israelite people. So this prophecy is talking of a man who would
come in the future, not someone already existing.

Read Isaiah 11:5.
Another prophecy of the coming Messiah shows that the people were expecting a MAN
who came from the same tribe as the man called Jesse (the father of King David). He
would be a man with special powers from God. The Israelite people have NEVER thought
their Messiah would be a God made into a man.

In Galatians 3:24
it shows that the Law of Moses (the commands and laws that God gave the people to
follow in the Old Testament) pointed forward to Jesus. It taught the people about the life and
death of the promised, coming Messiah.

Acts 28:23 shows
that the Apostle Paul taught the people about Jesus by using the Old Testament Bible
(also Acts 26:22,23), because Moses and the prophets had written about him.
Have a read of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 and you will see that these are incredible
prophecies about the death of Jesus telling us exactly how he would die.

But nowhere in
the Old Testament does it talk of Jesus being alive at the time, they all talk
of his coming in the future. Now, if Jesus is the Saviour of the whole world
and is so involved with the
Christians lives in the New Testament, why does he do NOTHING in the Old Testament? In the Old Testament we never
read of Jesus saying anything to anyone or doing anything. So if Jesus was an
angel or spirit before his birth, why didn't God use him?

This question is
easily answered if we believe that Jesus didn't exist until the New Testament
times.

JESUS-HIS BIRTH

The language used in the gospels of the
birth of Jesus is interesting. It uses the same words that we would use to describe a baby being born today. Luke 1:35
says that Mary 'conceived'. This word means to begin. If an idea is conceived
in my mind, I am the one who first thought of it - nobody else has given
me the idea. The idea BEGAN or was CONCEIVED in my mind. The same with a baby.
A baby starts its life when the sperm meets
the egg in the woman's body - this is the conceiving of the baby, the very
start of life and this is the word used in the Bible to describe the
birth of Jesus, So using His power, God
fertilized the egg in Mary's womb. Jesus began life in Mary's womb. Galatians 4:4 says that Jesus was made or
produced by a woman - he developed in the womb and was born in exactly the same way as we were. John 3:16 says
that Jesus was the only BEGOTTEN son
of God and this means he was the only one born of God. This is different to how Adam was made. God created
him but he was not Adam's physical
father, just a spiritual creator. Just like us - in the New Testament
Christians are called 'adopted sons
and daughters of God' but God only had one real son. We are brothers and sisters in Jesus, but spiritually not
physically.

It was this
miracle upon Mary that made Jesus. But read Luke 1:35. The angel said that because God was
using His power to create a child, that child would be His son. So the reason Jesus was God's son was because
God had used His power on Mary. He was His son because of this miracle. This
shows that Jesus began as the son of God when he
was born of Mary, not before. This is why God says in Psalm 2:7 “Today
Ihave become your father". It was the birth of Jesus that brought the
relationship of father and son.
Before this birth, Jesus could not have been a son. When people believe that
Jesus existed as God the Son before
his birth, we can see this is not true. He became the son of God when he began at his birth.

Now, if Jesus had already
existed, we would expect the gospel to tell us that his birth was a change from
spirit to flesh, but the Bible says nothing about this. We read that God's power came down and conceived Jesus in the
womb of Mary, not that Jesus the spirit or Jesus the angel came down
into Mary's womb! If Jesus did exist before as an angel or spirit what happened to him as he entered Mary?

JESUS-HIS PARENTS

The Bible uses
words that we can understand as humans. Jesus was a SON - what do we understand by the word son? A son is
a male child born to a father and mother. So when
God calls Jesus a son, He knows what we will think as humans so that is why He
uses the word. The Bible also describes Jesus as a DESCENDANT of David
and we understand this word because we have also descended from fathers,
grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Now, a father always exists before his
sons and a descendant can only come after the ones he has descended from. Would
you exist before your father or grandfather? No; neither did Jesus. If
these words 'son' and 'descendant' don't mean what
they mean to humans, why does God use these words to confuse us? God is not trying to confuse us - he uses these words because
He knows we understand what they mean.
We know that God has existed 'from everlasting to everlasting' (Psalm 90:2),
that He has no beginning and no end,
but the Bible never says this about Jesus. The Bible is clearly telling us that
Jesus DID have a beginning.

Jesus was called the 'son of God' and
the 'son of man'. Why? Because his father was God
and his mother was a human. So just like a child will act in some ways like his
mother and other ways like his father, so Jesus was like his mother and
his father. He had human nature from Mary
(which means that he was tempted to do bad things and able to sin against God) and he had
characteristics from his Father, God. So Jesus couldn't have existed before his mother because we are all made of
characteristics from both of our parents. If Jesus had existed before
his birth, he would have been a different
Jesus to the one who lived on the earth.

Remember, a
person's character is created in them when they are conceived by their parents.
Our character is part of our flesh; it is not separate to our flesh. Feelings
and emotions come from our brain which is part of our body (flesh).

We see that Jesus is still called a
man, even after he has gone to heaven and after his fleshly body has been
changed to a spiritual body. In 1 Timothy 2:5 we read that he is the mediator between God and men, the MAN Jesus
Christ. He was always a man. We never
read in the Bible about him being an angel or a spirit. If he had been an angel
or a spirit in heaven before and had become a man just to save us, you would
think that when he had done the work
and returned to heaven he would go back to being an angel or a spirit like before. The Bible tells us he is a
man, because that is what he has always been. In their teaching, the disciples also emphasized that he was a man
after he'd gone to heaven. Read Acts 2:22,23. They made no teaching
about Jesus returning to being God again.

Some Christians
today teach that he was an angel before his birth but Hebrews 2:7 shows that he was
made lower than the angels, he was a man with human nature which means that he
could die, Luke 20:36 tells us that angels are immortal, it is impossible for them to die and
yet we know that Jesus did die a horrible death and wasn't immortal until after his
resurrection, Again we see that Jesus couldn't have been an angel, We can see how
incredible his life was when we think that he was tempted to sin just like us
but EVERY time he chose to obey God rather than satisfy himself so he never
sinned.

JESUS-THE CREATOR?

People who
believe that Jesus existed before his birth believe that he created the world with God and yet we
never find Jesus saying that he created with God. Just the opposite. He always says that God
created it, Look at what Jesus says in Mark 10:6:

‘...but at the beginning of creation, God
made them male and female…’

Now this would
seem a strange thing for Jesus to say if it was he that had helped God to create Adam and Eve and the world! The
Bible tells us that God was the only power at work
at creation. He alone had the power to create things, See Isaiah 44:24
and Job 9:8.

So if Jesus
didn't exist at creation and God was the only power creating, how do we explain
the following passages?

Genesis 1:26

People use this
verse to say that Jesus must have been alive at creation. But notice that
nowhere in this chapter does it even mention Jesus. This verse can easily be
explained. The word God here isn't the real name of God (YAHWEH - the LORD) but
a title like the word
president. It means 'mighty ones' and in the Bible angels and men are called
gods or mighty ones if they have the word of
the LORD or if they are doing His work (for example see John 10:34-35 and Exodus 3:2-4), In the Hebrew language (the
Old Testament was written in Hebrew), this word God is ‘Elohim’ and is a plural
word, meaning that God here represents more than one person. We know
that there weren’t any men around at
creation because they hadn't been created yet, but there were angels and we
know from Psalm 8:5 that the angels were with God at the creation. In Psalm 8:5
the word for angels is this same
word ‘Elohim’, this time translated as angels instead of God, Remember too,
that we know that angels look like men because when angels went to Sodom
to rescue Lot in Genesis 19 he thought they were men. So we are created in the image of angels. It is the angels who are
speaking in Genesis 1:26 when they say ‘let us make man in our image’. They were doing the work of God. He was using them as servants to carry out his commands and so they
can be called God.

Proverbs 8:22-31

If we read these
verses, it seems to suggest that Jesus was with God when He created the world,
but we have done a very dangerous thing. We have taken these verses out of a chapter, without
reading the verses before and after, and decided that it is talking about Jesus, when it is
not. Jesus is not even mentioned in the book of Proverbs.Look at verses 1-3. Who is this chapter talking about? It is
talking about WISDOM. Now wisdom is not a person, it is a characteristic, a
word that describes what someone is like. But if we read the whole of the chapter we see that the
writer of the Proverbs is painting a clever picture. He is talking of wisdom as if it were a woman - and if we read the
first 9 chapters of this book, we see
he uses this picture so much; He also talks about a woman that represents foolishness.
The writer is giving advice to his son to look for and follow wise things, not foolish. So this passage is not talking about
Jesus at all, it is saying that God had wisdom and that everything He did was wise and not foolish. There was a
purpose behind everything that God did;
He created the world for a purpose.

JESUS-HAD TO LEARN

When Jesus was
born, we read that:

Luke 2:40

‘…he grew and became strong - he was filled with
wisdom ...'

Luke 2:52

‘…he grew in wisdom and stature - and in favour with
God and man...'

Hebrews 5:8

‘… Learned obedience through the things that he suffered'

Mark 13:22

‘…no-one knows about that day or hour, not even the
angels in heaven nor the son but only the Father'

Now, if we believe Jesus existed before
and he knew everything like his Father, did he have to forget it all at birth
and then learn it all over again?! Of course not - Jesus was born just like us and had to develop his own
relationship with his Father -just like we do. He grew in wisdom and
understanding - just like we should do as Christians, and he learned obedience through his suffering just like
we learn to trust God through the problems and sufferings we experience.
The only difference is that he did it perfectly because his love for God was greater than ours is.

If we believe that
Jesus existed as a spirit first and that he came down into Mary to get a human body - then
that means Jesus was a perfect spirit inside a fleshly body, When it tells us that Jesus had to learn
obedience, which part of him was learning obedience? Jesus the spirit or Jesus
the body? It is not our body that learns things, it is our mind. Remember our mind and body make up a person -
they're not two separate things. It must
be the same with Jesus. Jesus was not a God-spirit just living inside a fleshly
body. The Bible never tells us this.
People who believe this say that Jesus was 'fully God and fully human'
at the same time - but this doesn't make any sense! How can a person be God and human? This phrase is nowhere in the Bible.
Jesus was a fleshly
body. He was a man.

The coming of the
Messiah was to save people from their sins, to save them from death. As Christians our
hope of everlasting life is based on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead: Jesus was a
man who died and was brought back to life and given everlasting life. Because we've seen
it happen to one man, we know it can happen to many men and women, even us.
But if Jesus was not fully human, then our resurrection would be different to his and we would be the
first humans to be raised from the dead and given everlasting life, If a fully human man has never been raised from the
dead then we have no proof that this
can happen. So Jesus has to be fully human, a real man, for our Christian
hope to be real. Read 1 Corinthians 15:20-23. Jesus was a man and was resurrected as a man. So as men and women like him, we can also be resurrected to everlasting life.

PART TWO

So, how can we understand some of the
Bible verses that seem to say that Jesus DID exist before his birth? We will
look at some of these in detail later, but first we must understand about the
foreknowledge of God, This simply means God knowing things before they happen. God is omniscient - this
means that He knows everything. He knows
our thoughts, what will happen to us in 10 years time and He even knew us
before we were born. Psalm 139 is a
beautiful psalm that talks about how much God knows each one of us. This is hard for us to understand
because we think that we know everything
about ourselves but we don't - our knowledge is limited, we cannot see into the future to know what we will say or do but God
can and does.

Ephesians 1:4 ‘...for He chose us before the creation of the world…’

So God knew that I
was going to be born even before He created the world!! What a wonderful thing -
that God chose me to be a Christian over 6000 years ago before creation.I was in His plan for the world.He wanted me to be one of His spiritual children. And this
is the same for all the baptised believers of God, They have been chosen to do God's work. God said the
same to Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 1:5 ‘...before I formed you
in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart, I appointed you
as a prophet to the nations...’

God had chosen
Jeremiah to do this work of a prophet for Him before he was ever born.Maybe this can help us to understand the way that God
speaks about Jesus, because Jesus was the most important part of God's plan for the world. Jesus had
been chosen for the most important work of
saving humans from sin and death. Look at Revelation 13:8:

‘...the
Lamb WHO WAS SLAIN (or killed) FROM THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.’

Jesus is the Lamb of God and here it
says he died before creation. Now we know that Jesus didn't die before creation - he died about 4000 years after
creation, so what does this verse
mean? It must mean that in GOD'S PLAN, He knew that His son, Jesus, would have to die to save people from their sins.
It wouldn't happen for many years but it
was part of God's plan and everything was working towards this. Now we would
never say that you or I or Jeremiah
existed before the creation - so why do people say that Jesus did?

God is using the
same language to talk about you, me, Jeremiah and Jesus, all of us in God's plan before
the world was created.

Read these lovely
verses in Romans 8:29,30. These are difficult verses, but basically they are saying that God knew from the
beginning who would accept Jesus (foreknew) and so worked in the lives of those people to bring them to a knowledge
of His son (pre­destined). He put them through experiences
so they would learn about Christianity (conformed to the likeness) and
then gave them the opportunity to follow Jesus (called). If they accepted and became baptized, their sins
were washed away (justified) and if they keep following Jesus they will be in the Kingdom of God (glorified).

Remember too,
that God has foreknowledge (He knows what will happen in the future). When God
says something is going to happen it ALWAYS happens. So God sometimes speaks about
things as though they HAVE already happened because He knows they will happen!! For
example, in Genesis 15:18, God says to Abraham 1 have given you the land', yet we know that Abraham never
received the land in his lifetime, and won't until Jesus returns to the earth
and raises him from the dead. In Genesis 17:5, God says to Abraham 1 have MADE
you a father of many nations' - but Abraham didn't have any children when he said this! But God can speak like
this because NOTHING can make Him
break His promises. We may think sometimes that God's promises are like ours.
If I make a promise I may have to break it because I fall sick or have
an accident or run out of money - but these things can't happen to God. It is
impossible for God to break His promise and
so we always know that what God says is going to happen.

Romans 4:17‘...the God who gives life to the dead and
calls things that are not as though they
were’

Isaiah 46:10,11‘...I make known
the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come...I say,
My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please... what I have said,
that will I bring about: what I have planned, that will I do.’

These verses are showing that when God
says something will happen. Nothing will stop it, even though it may not happen
for a long time. There is no doubt that it will happen eventually.

So God can talk about something that
has not happened as if it has already
happened because with His foreknowledge He knows it will happen.

Because God was so
certain that He would have a son who would die for our sins, he sometimes speaks
in the Old Testament as if it had already happened. But we know that Jesus
didn't exist or die before his birth - this was just in God's plan for Jesus.

I Peter 1:19-20 ‘...Christ.. was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake...’

These verses
explain clearly how Jesus was in God's plan from the beginning but he didn't exist
until he was born, when he, the Son of God, was revealed to the world. Finally
read Hebrews 1:1,2

‘... in the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many
times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His son whom
He appointed heir of all things and through whom He made the universe.’

God created the
earth with the purpose of everlasting life (Titus 1:2). This was His wise plan and He knew
that as part of His plan a Saviour would be needed to bring that everlasting life.

So God spoke to men and women through
prophets in the Old Testament but when the
time was right, He created His son who the prophets had talked about - and sent
him to speak to the people (Galations 4:4-5).

PART THREE

Let us look in
more detail at some verses that seem to say that Jesus DID exist and see if we can find a
way of understanding them which follows the teaching of the rest of the Bible. Remember the Bible cannot teach
that he did exist and that he didn't exist. The Bible is one complete message from God and it teaches that Jesus did not
exist until he was born,

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

Many of the
confusing verses come from the gospel of John. As we read the writings of John
we see how different he was from the other gospel writers - he used language
that was very difficult. Often he speaks in words with a very spiritual meaning
so we have to think about them a
lot to understand what point he was trying to make. Just like the parables - Jesus wanted us not just to enjoy his
stories about sowers and lost sheep but to think carefully and see the spiritual meanings underneath the story.
We see in the gospel of John that SO often Jesus would say spiritual
things and the people didn't understand him.
For example, in John 3, Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he needs to be born again and Nicodemus misunderstands him,
thinking that he has to enter his mother’s
womb again and go through the whole birth process to be saved!! In John 4:15, the Samaritan woman asks for the ‘living water' of Jesus so that she
would never have to go to the well
again to fetch water - she doesn't understand that Jesus is talking of the water
of salvation. In John 6:52, Jesus is telling the people they must eat of his
flesh because he is the bread of the world.
Many of the disciples stopped following him then because they couldn't
understand him. We can see that Jesus is NOT speaking about real things, but
using these real things as pictures to make people think spiritually. So when
we read the gospel of John, let us not make the same mistake, let us understand
what Jesus is really saying.

John explains why
he wrote his gospel in John 20:30,31 - to show that Jesus was the Messiah promised
in the Old Testament, Christ is the Greek word that means Messiah. John is not
trying to show that Christ is God or that he was in heaven with God before his birth.

God sent Jesus

Firstly in John,
there are many times when Jesus says he is 'sent' from heaven or that he 'came from' his
father. Now if Jesus didn't exist physically in heaven before his birth, how are we to understand these verses?
Much of John's gospel records conversations between
the religious leaders of the day (the Pharisees and Sadducees) and Jesus. The Pharisees
and Sadducees didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God. Even seeing God's power in miracles didn't convince them and
because of envy they finally had Jesus killed. Jesus, in these
conversations, is trying to show them that he IS God's son. That God HAS given him power and authority from heaven
to do His work and speak His words and how they must believe this to be
saved. So, he keeps saying over and over again
1 am sent from God, I have come from God'.

This may seem
strange, but we use the same sort of language today in English. You may say you come
from the tribe of Buganda or Basoga or you come from your parents but this isn't
talking of a physical journey. It is just telling someone your origin, in the
same way, I can write to my mother in UK and ask her to go somewhere for me.
She could say she has been sent from Uganda or she has been sent by her
daughter, even though she hasn't physically been with me in Uganda In the
same way, Jesus says he's been sent by his Father or sent from heaven, even
though he has not physically been with God in heaven.

My friend Mary
says that she is from Tanzania because her parents were born there but she was
born in Uganda and has never lived in Tanzania. Her origin is Tanzania. Jesus says he is from
heaven because his Father is in heaven and even though Jesus had never been
there before he was born, his origin is heaven. So Jesus never physically came down from
heaven, these verses are saying that his ORIGIN was heavenly.

We read in John
1:6 that John the Baptist was also sent by God but we would never say that John the
Baptist was in heaven with God and that he physically left heaven to come to earth! (see
also Isaiah 6:8, Psalm 105:17, John 1:9 and Jeremiah 7:25 - all verses that say
someone was sent by God but we don't think that Isaiah, Joseph, 'all men' or Jeremiah were in heaven). The Bible
also says that wisdom and good gifts come down from heaven in James 1:17 and James 3:17 but we would never say that our
job or clothes or food were in heaven before we got them. We just understand
that they are provided by God, that He is the one who has given them to us.
Read Matthew 21:25. Again, this
doesn't mean that John's baptism came down from heaven, it just means that it was something commanded by God who is in
heaven.

Here is a good
example. In John 6:32,33,38,51,58 Jesus compares his coming down from heaven with
the manna or angels’ food that came down from heaven to feed God's people in the desert. But when we look
back in the Old Testament we can see that the manna
did not really come down from heaven, it appeared on the ground in the morning when the dew went. It 'came down' from God just
like all good gifts come down from God
- it just means it was provided by God. Jesus was the greatest gift that God
has given us.

John 8:57

This is another verse in John that may
confuse us. A mistake many people make with this
verse is they think it says ‘before Abraham was, I was’ - meaning that
Jesus existed before Abraham. But if
we read carefully, it doesn't say this. It says ‘before Abraham was, l
am’. Now, remember that God had
promised to Abraham that Jesus would be his descendant,
that he would come in the future, so this verse can't mean that Jesus existed
before Abraham. Jesus was only in the plan of God when Abraham was alive. This
verse could mean that even before Abraham was alive, Jesus was in the plan of God. Jesus was the centre of the promise made to
Abraham, so without Jesus, none of the promises could ever have been
kept. Jesus was more important than Abraham. It was Jesus who would bring salvation and blessing, not Abraham. Before
God made the promise to Abraham, He had to have Jesus in His plan because the
promise was about Jesus. Jesus was the
‘seed’ or descendant promised to Abraham. Abraham understood about the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ (Galatians
3:8) and he was happy when he realized what the promise really meant.
So, when it says in verse 56 that ‘Abraham rejoiced to see my day’, Jesus is
saying that Abraham understood that one day Jesus would come and bring blessings to the world, keeping the promise that
God had made to Abraham.

Colossians
1:15-18

These verses seem
to be saying that Jesus was the first one born before anything else was created and
that then he created the world with God. Now, if we believe Jesus existed before he
was born by Mary, how was he born before creation? Notice it doesn't say he
was the first created of all creation, but the first born of all
creation. So, did Jesus have a
birth before his birth by Mary? Of course he didn't. Let’s look at these verses more closely.

Verse 18 says that
he was the firstborn from the dead, not the first one born at creation.
He was the first man to be born again (raised from the dead) who would never die again. Many people were
raised from the dead before Jesus, like Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter, but they died
again. Jesus was raised and given everlasting life. Revelation 1:5 says the same and 1 Corinthians 15:20 says ‘but
Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have
fallen asleep’. What is a firstfruit? It is the first fruit that you see on a tree.
It tells us that the rest of the tree will soon be covered with hundreds of
fruits. Jesus was the first one to be raised and given everlasting life, but
wonderfully there will be many, many more
who will also be raised from the dead when Jesus returns and given everlasting
life. When we are baptized into Jesus, we enter a relationship with God
through Jesus, where we can be raised from the dead and given everlasting life.
When
we are baptized we are born again and it is as if we have been created again,
this time not created as part of the
world but as part of the church. Jesus created the church - he is the head of all the members (Ephesians
4:15,16). So we can be a part of the New
Creation (church) when we accept and believe in Jesus and be baptized
(Ephesians 2:10, II Corinthians
5:17).

Come back to
Colossians 1 and look at what Jesus has created. It's not trees, mountains, animals
and plants that Jesus created. They were created in the first, physical creation
in Genesis by God. Jesus has created 'thrones, dominions, principalities and powers'. This is the
creation that Jesus was the beginning of and the creation that he is now in control of. It is the church. The people
that are part of this new creation will sit on thrones and have powers
in the Kingdom to come. You should read the
whole of this wonderful chapter to see what Jesus has really done for us.

John 1:1-4

Back to John's
gospel. Now, we have seen that the
beginning does not always mean the beginning of the world but in the New Testament it often means the
beginning of the preaching of the gospel to
those who would become the new creation (become baptized).

It seems that John
1:1 is also talking of this new creation. The language is very similar to that in Colossians,
and if we look at the first verse of Mark and also the first verse of John's
letter (1 John 1:1) we see that both times it is referring to the new creation.
In fact, every time that we read the phrase ‘In the beginning’ in the writings
of John, it is talking about the beginning of the gospel, not the Genesis
creation.

So this verse is not telling us that
Jesus existed at the creation of the world. It is talking of the new creation that is the church that
exists because of Jesus. Without Jesus there would be no church - he is the one
who created it.

Hebrews 7:3

Some people think these verses are
saying that Jesus did not begin and will not end. That just like God, Jesus also was from ‘everlasting to everlasting’.
We know God is the only person who
has no beginning (Psalm 90:2) so what do these verses mean?

Read the whole
chapter and notice verses 1-3,6,11-15,22-24. The Jewish people were saying that Jesus
couldn’t be a priest because he was not from the tribe of Levi. This chapter is showing that Jesus is a
special priest. In the Old Testament Law of Moses, priests in God's temple had to be from the tribe of Levi and no other
tribe of Israel. They had to be able
to prove they were from a priestly line and that their parents were both Levites.
They started their service as priest at the age of 20 and finished at the age
of 50. The Jewish people knew that
Jesus was descended from the tribe of Judah not Levi and he wasn't from
a priestly family (verse 14) so they questioned how he could be a priest.

To show them that Jesus was a special
priest, Paul reminds them of Melchizedek, the first mentioned priest in the Old
Testament. The Jews accepted him because he was chosen by God, even Abraham
honoured him. Then Paul compares Melchizedek with Jesus, who was also a special priest chosen by God. Neither of them were
from the tribe of Levi, neither of
them had parents from a priestly line, neither of them had started their priestly service at the age of 20 and finished
when they were 50. But Paul is showing that this doesn’t matter.God had chosen them for a special work, they
were to be accepted as special priests. Paul is not saying that Jesus
has no beginning or ending. He is saying
that unlike the priesthood in the Old Testament, Jesus did not start being a priest
at the age or 20 and finish at 50, Jesus is a priest FOREVER (verse 17). All of
these verses are just comparing the Old
Testament priesthood with the New Testament priesthood of Jesus.

Hebrews 7:3,4

How Jesus
fulfilled this...

‘without mother
and father’

Not from the
tribe of Lev! (verse 14)

'without
genealogy'

Not from a
priestly line (verse 6)

‘without
beginning of days or end of life’

Didn't start at
20 and finish at 50 (verse 16, 17)

‘remains a
priest forever’

Priesthood
lasts forever (verse 17)

So, the
priesthood of the Law of Moses in the Old Testament ended, but the priesthood of Jesus will
never end.

John 17:5

This verse seems to say that Jesus
existed with God before the world began and that they both had glory together. This is not what Jesus is saying. He is
praying to God, his Father, asking Him
to keep the promise that He made. From the beginning of time, God's plan
was to give men and women everlasting life. This could only come through Jesus. Jesus is asking God to complete His
purpose with him. Jesus does not ask God to give him back the glory that
he had - just for God to give him the glory that God had planned for him from the beginning of the world.
Jesus is saying that the time is now right.

We have to
understand the language of the Bible. Remember God can speak about things as if they
have already happened because he knows nothing is going to stop His purpose. Jesus also knows this. Look at
how the Bible talks about the reward that WE will
have as faithful Christians.

2 Corinthians 5:1‘we
HAVE a building from God’(our
spiritual body, not given to us until Jesus
returns)

1 Peter 1:5‘Inheritance... kept in heaven for you’ (our
inheritance is the earth, not heaven.The inheritance is
already ours, we are just waiting for Jesus
to come and give it to us)

Matthew 25:34‘inheritance...
Kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world’(God's plan for us was
from the beginning of the world but will
not happen until Jesus returns)

John 17:22‘HAVE given them the glory that you gave me’(the disciples had not been given this yet
and neither had Jesus, it was a promise of future glory)

Now we know we haven't received our
reward yet. Revelation 22:12 says that Jesus is bringing our reward with him
when he returns to the earth in the future.

These verses are just saying that we will have this when the time is right because
God promised it. Nothing can stop it
happening.

So the Bible is
using language to show us how certain God's promises are, telling us that we HAVE something
before we get it. In these verses Jesus is asking for what is his. He's not had this
glory yet but in God's plan from the beginning it was something that He would give to
Jesus. He would make Jesus Saviour of the world and a future king.

Finally, look at 2
Timothy 1:9,10. WE have been saved by the death of Jesus. This work of salvation, everlasting life,
was given to Jesus. This was God's plan from the beginning. And this purpose
was revealed when Jesus was born 2000 years ago. He started doing the work that God had created him to do.

'this grace was given us in Jesus before the beginning of time'.

Salvation for us
through Jesus was in God's plan from the beginning of the world too. But we didn't need
to have grace (forgiveness of sins) until we were born because that is when we started to
exist. But God knew as humans we would be sinners and would need saving so He
put this in His plan before we were born.

conclusion

So, if we look carefully at the Bible and try to
understand these verses in the context of the whole Bible, we can see that Jesus did
not exist before he was born by Mary.

The birth of Jesus was the beginning of Jesus.

The Old Testament is full of prophecies about the coming of a human Messiah to
save people from their sins and when the time was right, in God's plan, Jesus was born to
fulfil the promise of the prophecies.

We must not confuse Jesus existing in God's plan with him physically
existing as something (an angel or spirit) before his birth. This is not the teaching
of the Bible.

The Bible teaches that Jesus existed in the thoughts of God as the
centre of His plan for the earth.